ONORIENT, a student’s cultural immersion in the Arab world

20th March 2017

Created in 2013 by three bloggers, ONORIENT is a web-magazine highlighting artists of the Maghreb and the Middle Eastern region, who rose out of the ashes of the Arabic revolutions in 2011. Throughout multidisciplinary projects that involve writing, music, graffiti or drawing, they aim to promote the cultural and artistic wealth of this region which is a testimony of a creative and also ambitious youth, who is sometimes unknown from traditional media.

In constant transformation, this project quickly overtook the simple cultural aspect to become a more intimate project. Meeting after meeting, four of the active members of Onorient were promptly caught up by identical questions regarding the concept of the “Arabic identity”, and thus felt the need to meet these artists in persons, in order to have a complete cultural immersion. That is how they started a fabulous five month journey in six countries of the Maghreb and the Middle Easter region.

From left to right: Ghita Chilla, Oumayma Ajarrai, Hajar Chokairi and Mehdi Drissi.

Meeting with these adventurers :

Could you introduce the initiative in two sentences?

Onorient is a window exposing the cultural dynamics of the Maghreb and the Middle East, and which contributes to the promotion of long-term trends, talents, events and news of the region.

Onorient was born in March, 2013 as an initiative of Moroccan bloggers who wished to give more visibility to young artists and emerging cultural spheres of influence of the MENA region -often forgotten by traditional media and circuits.

Ever since, the project has transformed into a multidisciplinary website for the promotion of the cultural and artistic richness of the Maghreb and the Middle East regions. We diversified its media (editorial, audio and visual content) and its activities (conferences, concerts, citizens and itinerant journalism) and we also multiplied partnerships (Media, Festivals, NGOs, institutions).

Today, this initiative counts several active members and a strengthened network with partners on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea.

How do you involve young people in this adventure/ how can we get involved in the Onorient project? What are your projects for the future?

Our role as founding team is to support the young people passionate by the MENA region and to allow them to become the designers of stories around art and creation. Sharing unique stories, showing the positive dynamics of the Maghreb and the Middle East regions, and deconstructing negative myths, are the common denominators of the members of this adventure.

So, there are diverse ways to get involved in Onorient:

Firstly, as a writer, wherever you are in the world, you can be our onsite reporter to identify the artists and initiatives engaged in promoting the cultural revival of this region.

You can also join our community and be involved in a project which you can develop with the support of the founding team (reporting, conference, events, workshops, etc.).

With this dynamic, we would like to be able to connect and share the creativity and the talents of this region with the widest and most diversified public possible.

Therefore, regarding our next projects, we are currently working on a recapitulative documentary of the Onorientour experience - an itinerant immersion through the more underground cultural scene of six different countries of the Arab world. We wish to spread it and develop it into a platform for constructive debate on the notion of “being Arabic”. Finally, after circulating this road-movie, we wish to enhance Onorientour as a long-term initiative through a series of editions that will focus on new areas of investigation.

Do you have any recommendations for young people willing to launch a similar project?

To participate in the promotion of cultural diversity, is to become aware of the richness of our expressions and to act for the transmission of a universal heritage in which all the differences are celebrated. Our action, in favor of the culture of the Maghreb and the Middle East regions, was born from a need to act in a dreary geopolitical context in order to bring into the light positive initiatives. But in the end, no matter the cause we wish to defend, the important thing is to believe in it, to let oneself be driven by ambition, to tell oneself that we are capable of it, and to act for it.